- June 2016
23 what? 23 pleases? 23 hours in a day? We know that the number 23 is crucial. We don’t know why. This sketch show hasn’t happened, isn’t happening and will not happen. But don’t let that stop you coming to see it.
A brand new sketch show from Footlights and co Enrico Hallworth, Adam Woolf, and Rufus McAlister.
Previous Praise:
"A sample of the quirkiness and brilliance of Cambridge’s late-night comedy scene" - Varsity
"Varied, relatable and, most importantly of all, funny" - The Tab
"Innovative and excellent with a glorious bizarreness" - CTR
★★★★★ Varsity
★★★★★ CTR
★★★★½ The Tab
9/10 TCS
- June 2016
Voices In My Head is a one woman, monologue series featuring 5 characters from the past present and future, each examining an abortion narrative contextualized by the time in which they live.
- June 2016
Exams are over but May Week has yet to arrive. You’re still here, but there’s nothing on. It’s not yet summer, but it’s no longer winter. What should you do in the strange time of nothingness they call ‘Week 7’? Go and see "Vox Pop: A Sketch Show", of course!
Entirely written and performed by freshers this sketch show uses "vox pops" at its core and is sure to bring something new to the Cambridge comedy scene!
They’ve literally sacrificed all hopes of getting a 2:2 to make you laugh. The least you could do is buy a ticket.
P.S. If you still have exams on, this counts as revision. We’ve checked with your DoS.
- June 2016
‘Some stories have a happy ending, Dean. You’re allowed to give yourself a happy ending’.
Dean is a sixteen year old transgender boy, waiting for his world to catch up with his mind.
He may be secure in his own identity, but Dean is yet to learn that he has only won the battle, and still needs to win the war, as those around him rocket between acceptance and alienation, straining the foundations of his support network to breaking point. As his parents' marriage crumbles, his own on-again-off-again relationship with childhood sweetheart Josh shudders and struggles to evolve.
In a complex examination of what it means for an individual to transition, Evan Placey’s 2014 drama explores the potency of teenage love, the fragility of family bonds and, above all, the fluidity of both gender and sexuality.
A love story about transition, testosterone and James Dean.
Trigger Warnings: transphobia, mis-gendering, deadnaming, suicide reference, mention of self-harm, dysphoria, mental health
Content Notes: partial nudity, mention of hormones, mention of surgery, swearing, mild violence
- June 2016
You are cordially invited to witness some of ‘the country’s finest minds’ reading the staggering works of literary genius they created as adolescents.
With a programme of earth-shattering poetry, selected letters & diary entries, and highly erotic vicar fiction this is set to be THE highlight of the Cambridge/national/global literary calendar.
Expect live music. (Black tie optional).
- May–June 2016
Wait … what has just happened? Oh.
In the time it takes a butterfly to flap its wings, whole lives fall apart. We collide or even just brush against each other and in that moment, we cause immense changes. Changes that have practical, legal, emotional, relational or societal consequences which no one could have predicted. With each decision we make, we change the world which, in turn, changes ourselves.
Imogen and Jack are spending a Saturday morning in the park with their daughter Sarah who is going off to university soon. There’s cracks in the family relationships. Meanwhile, Ben is having a hard time coping with his loved one’s depression and is putting his own job at risk. At the same time, Melissa struggles being a single parent with only her friend Clare to confide in. But in a blink of an eye, their worlds are turned upside down by a terrible accident.
Do accidents really happen? Or is everything someone’s responsibility? Could all tragedies be avoided? Unlikely.
But once a tragedy does happen, what remains? What is it that made us who we are and how much of ourselves can we hold on to after an accident that split our lives open?
Butterfly Effect is a collaboratively written piece by local playwrights who have been challenged to explore cause and effect via a new dramaturgical approach. This innovative production is being brought to you by WRiTEON in partnership with Twisted Willow Theatre.
- May 2016
Ashes to Ashes, one of Pinter's later, more unknown works, is a harrowing insight into the relationship between married couple Devlin and Rebecca. Devlin's relentless questioning of Rebecca about a former lover leads her to reveal that the lover has played a shocking part in mankind's darkest hour, and Rebecca soons realises that she too feels inextricably linked to this event, but not as perpetrator, rather as a victim. Ashes to Ashes begins as a chilling domestic drama which escalates to an altogether more sinister level, as we are reminded that the personal and the political are often all too indivisible.
- May 2016
“All humanity is here. There's Greed, there's Fear, Joy, Faith, Hope. And the greatest of these … is Money.”
The true story of the US energy giant Enron who found themselves thirty billion dollars into debt, by selling their own debt to themselves and hoodwinking the world into thinking they were making billions of dollars of profit.
The twisted nature of the men and women at Enron is laid bare in a high energy orgy of business, finances and ultimately greed.
Tragedy and savage comedy; foul-language and sex. One of the world’s largest financial scandals is about to get entertaining.
- May 2016
“‘You see…I believe in the god of carnage. He has ruled, uninterruptedly, since the dawn of time.”
Winner of the Tony Award for Best Play and adapted for the big scren by Roman Polanski, The God of Carnage is one the recent masterpieces of contemporary theatre.
Everything starts off from a simple scuffle, when the eleven-year old Benjamin knocks out two of his friend’s Henry, teeth with a stick. Their parents meet to discuss how best to straighten out the children’s unruly behaviour. What starts off as a civilized, well-intentioned evening slowly degenerates into childish bickering and the “worst day of their life”.Will anyone get out of this ill-fated encounter with their dignity and their liberal principles, not to mention the apartment, intact?
Watch the God of carnage take over in this bold and relentlessly entertaining new production.
- May 2016
Inspired by a treatment method for psychosis in Finland, this experimental play explores the nature of schizophrenia by dividing the Corpus Playroom in two. Each side of the audience will view a different storyline but experience auditory hallucinations from the other side of the wall. We meet a mother and her two sons on the 'domestic' side, and the psychiatrist on the 'public'.
With a small cast and a lot of potential for creativity with staging, costume and unique dialogue, this darkly comic, deeply inventive and honest play will be the most exciting play next term!
- May 2016
friki
fri•ki (free-kee) adj. coloq.
(from English freaky) pejorative word in Spanish meaning weirdo, usually said of a person with unusual interests and character.
Isa Bonachera presents her first full hour of stand-up, come and find out how long you can endure a Spanish accent.
“a particular brand of genius” The Tab
“really stood out” Varsity
“delightfully deadpan” The Tab
“she puts the audience at ease and instantly sent them into hysterics” The Tab
“hilarious” Wolfson Howler Promo
ALL PROCEEDS WILL BE DONATED TO THE AGAINST MALARIA FOUNDATION
- May 2016
It is 4th October, 1957, the launch of the Earth's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1; thousands wait with baited breath; a beach ball spins elegantly through space; the stage is set. David Hastings' critically acclaimed play comes to the stage for the first time since its sellout world tour six years ago, now explosively reimagined for the Cambridge theatre scene. Two actors tell the story of one of the most unique decades in our history, The Space Race. From its flash point in 1957 to the climactic Apollo 11 landing, join a roller coaster journey of epic proportions and intimate realities, the entire tale told with the most ordinary of objects, in the most extraordinary way. One Small Step is a highly entertaining and compelling look at the people and the politics of the Space Race, weaving its way through a decade which still defines the way we live today.
- May 2016
Three strangers are about to face their demons head on. Balanced precariously on the tipping point, they might just be able to save one another – if they can only over come their urge to self destruct.
- April 2016
‘Strange Bedfellows’ is a new sketch show that revels in the ridiculous. The news is changing the way we think and it is also changing the way we do not think. Every day we are bombarded with thousands upon thousands of news stories that run from the terrifying to the ridiculous, from the measured to the reactionary, from the mundane to the life-changing. We know more than ever, yet understand so little. And sometimes the only rational reaction is to laugh.
Painfully real and joyfully absurd, ‘Strange Bedfellows’ is as incongruous and micro-managed as its subject matter. Expect big laughs, fast-paced comedy, and a whole lot of fun.
From writers and performers of ‘Switch’ ( - Varsity), ‘Farewell Tim’ ( - CTR), ‘Footlights Presents: Xylophone’ (***** - The Tab), and numerous Footlights smokers.
- April 2016
“Welcome to the world; it’s such a funny place. The people who you love the most are also the ones who make you cry. I’m not sure why.”
Six-year-old Jen Tracy welcomes her newborn brother John into the world, with a warning about the pain the ones you love can cause you…
Set against the backdrop of a changing America between 1950 and 1990, "john & jen" follows the story of Jen and her relationships with the two Johns in her life: her brother, and his namesake, her son.
A chamber musical beautifully scored by Tony nominee Andrew Lippa, composer of "The Addams Family", "john & jen" is Lippa’s overlooked masterpiece.
Chock-full of wit, sparkle and touching ballads, at its heart John & Jen is a moving portrayal of family: of brother and sister, and of mother and son.
- April 2016
Inspired by the timeless universe of Disney’s animated musical features, princesses, monsters, talking animals, witches, toys, snowmen, and new completely reimagined characters are all singing improvised songs in this roller-coaster of a show! Join Alice on her adventures in improvland, and explore the jungle of improvised wordplay, voyage deep under surface of scripted theatre, visit the less family friendly part of Neverland, and tour the kingdom of funky, fresh improvised rhythms.
- March 2016
- March 2016
- March 2016
Come one, come all, to a comedy extravagamza of comedic and #relatable sketches about Cambridge life, written by real Cambridge students in a real Cambridge college. A night perfect for all college families no matter which college you call home. We all need a laugh now and then, don’t we? Right?
- March 2016
Violet has just split up with her husband. Cecilia likes painting dead birds. The sisters are living in their mildewed family pile in the back of beyond to look after their senile father and stop the ceiling from caving in. When their brother arrives with a prospective buyer, he unwittingly raises a storm of questions about the house's past and future.
The halls echo with eerie love songs, and the kitchen where the family gathers seems haunted by ghostly presences – alive and dead. As the body count moves from birds to things more substantial, the house’s occupants are forced to reconsider the life their family has led for centuries.
‘The Beck’ is by turns a warm, dark, and uncomfortably real piece of new writing by Flora de Falbe.
- March 2016
Sputnik was the first artificial Earth satellite. Buttnik is a genuine Earth human in the form of Rob Oldham. He will be doing stand-up, orbiting and landing on various things (figuratively). Join this Cambridge Footlight for an hour of laughs.
Words from the past: 'Oldham’s material is wonderfully dead-pan. Surreal, insightful and hilarious'- Broadway Baby
'Bizarre and very green'- The Tab
'Has the audience laughing from start to finish' TCS
10/10 Varsity, 5 stars The Tab, 5 stars TCS
- March 2016
Hercules! Odysseus! Mighty mighty Aphrodite! - Amazing characters!
Olympus! Troy! The shadowy mists of the Underworld! - Incredible settings!
Minotaurs! Medusa! Magic boxes full of human suffering! - Anything goes!
A different heroic legend of golden ages past will be performed every night before your very eyes, using ideas from your very brain. Jealousy and hubris, sex and war: the stories of vindictive gods, child-eating humans, and hideous monsters make the most dastardly episode of "Days of our Lives" look like "Watch with Mother"!
MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF ANCIENT IMPROV -
EVEN ALMIGHTY ZEUS GIVES IT 5 STARS
Based on suggestions from you, the audience, the Cambridge Impronauts will weave a tale worthy of Homer or Aeschylus. For one week only, the Corpus Playroom is transformed into the Corpus Amphitheatre, the finest improvised comedy venue in this world and all others!
- March 2016
‘Do they always do that?’
‘Who?’
‘The birds.’
‘No. It’s unusual. It’s the marsh. The marsh calls them. They’ve been coming a thousand years.’
Wattmore and Griffin are ex-Cambridge college gardeners, living with secrets and darkness in the bleakness of the Fens. A £2000 pound poetry prize run by the university could be the blessing they’re after to clear Wattmore’s mysterious debt, if only they knew anything about poetry. As bird-watchers flock to the marshes near their cabin to catch a glimpse of the elusive night heron, the arrival of ex-convict Bolla to this strange family brings an unexpected female force and their lives unravel before us.
Haunting and poetic, Butterworth’s second play brims with absurd humour and symbolic imagery. This Week 7 Lent show lays humanity bare in a setting we know well, but have not seen like this before.
Prepare for shock, for laughs and underscoring it all, the urgent howls of the freezing Cambridgeshire wind.
- February 2016
The Fletcher Players and Shadwell Society bring you “Smorgasbord”: a brand-new festival showcasing the most exciting and original extracts from emerging student playwrights.
Hosted the Corpus Playroom, this is a casual opportunity for writers to have their work performed on-stage, with the chance for the pieces to be discussed and critiqued afterwards by the audience.
Unlike many other writing festivals, there are no limits to the works being presented – they can be complete plays, extracts from a larger piece, or rough first drafts – as long as they are between 5 and 10 minutes in length.
Come and see some of the boldest works of new theatre in their rawest and most creatively fertile state
- February 2016
Next Door is a new piece of student writing that takes a look into the most familiar aspects of our day to day lives; when we sit around the kitchen table. Made up of sparadic, disconnected scenes and characters, the unity of the play rests on the similarity of circumstance and the tendencies of structure in the dialogue, which may be sometimes painfully familiar. Ranging from scenes that depict the most tedious to the most poignant moments of human lives, Next Door creates a sense of community out of the times when we may feel most alone or isolated.
The script is committed to perfected naturalism, and the actors involved will portray characters that they themselves have written and developed, mostly through Verbatim work. Listening carefully to recordings of real conversations that actors have whitnessed, we will work to devise dialogue that is meticulously accurate to the real ways people speak.
This is a chance to properly unwrap the structure of our language, and become intensely familiar with the rhythm and pattern of the most everyday speech. Through these processes, both actors and audience will uncover a liberating and inspiring beauty in the moments we tend to take for granted.
- February 2016
"I don't want realism. I want magic."
Blanche DuBois is a faded Southern Belle, her whole life taken away from her. But she is determined to cling on to the past, come what may. She seeks refuge in the dilapidated home of her sister in New Orleans but here she finds Stanley Kowalski, brash and aggressive, and determined to bring Blanche's fragile existence crashing down around her. As Blanche and Stanley's confrontation comes to a head, Blanche retreats further and further into fantasy and delusion until she can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion.
Tennessee William's masterpiece is a violent and moving tale of lust and death, the New World and the Old, the brutish and the delicate, dreams and harsh reality.
This intimate new production brings the audience not just into the cramped tenement in the New Orleans French Quarter but into Blanche DuBois' fragile and haunted mind.
- February 2016
It's the summer hols at last! Escape the windy rain of February and join the Famous Five for seaside hijinks and simply lashings of ginger beer. When Julian, Dick and Anne join their cousin George for the summer holidays, they are sure that adventure is just around the corner. And they're right! Something fishy is happening on Kirrin Island. Someone's signalling from the tower, there are strange crates on the beach, and where oh where is Timmy?
Things are looking grim, but don't worry -
Aunt Fanny's packed a picnic.
From creative persons behind And Then There Were Nuns, Night of the Amorous Prawn, Tristram Shandy: Live at the ADC! and Picasso Stole the Mona Lisa comes a new comedy that will redefine the word 'corking'.
- February 2016
‘As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.’
Berkoff’s Metamorphosis, adapted from Franz Kafka’s 1912 fable Die Verwandlung, is a gruelling and pertinent commentary on the role of the worker in society. Gregor slaves relentlessly to provide for his family. His self-neglecting existence eats away at him, until he becomes a metaphor of his state: a giant beetle, a creature so lowly that it eats its own excrement. Exhausted of empathy and disgusted by him, Gregor’s family leave him to waste away, and Gregor becomes a martyr for a system which took but gave him nothing. Does work really pay, and who pays the greatest cost?
- February 2016
‘I don’t care if I am an abomination. That woman, that wrong woman, is who I am, and I refuse to be cured.’
This claustrophobic, bittersweet twist on a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses turns the romance of Iphis and Ianthe into a tragedy. The heroine, Iphis, having been transformed into a man by the goddess Isis in order to solve the ‘problem’ of her homosexuality, suffers an identity crisis. Her mother Telethusa and new wife Ianthe struggle to cope with her depression and anger, which threaten to turn into radical action against her misogynistic father, Isis and society itself.
This bleak yet hopeful student-written play challenges prevailing ideas that our identities are not our own. In our world of increasingly fluid sexuality and gender roles, 'Iphis' raises the question – does mankind ever progress beyond its prejudices?
- February 2016
"It’s just another place to live. Ireland – America – what’s the difference?"
Tomorrow morning, Gar O’Donnell flies to Philadelphia.
Tomorrow morning, he leaves behind everything and everyone he has ever known.
Tonight, he has doubts.
Watch private hopes and fears unfold in public in Brian Friel’s poignant examination of family ties, leaving home and escaping the past.
- February 2016
'You let him in and he puts down the knife and the prayer mat on your floor and you offer him wine.
But he doesn’t drink. But you do drink -
Cut to your face. Cut to the knife. Cut to the prayer mat.
And you – you play that, her aching sexuality. Which I know you... I love your work.'
The producer has a story to sell and a multimillion dollar budget to blow. It’s got everything: Sex. Terror. Disneyland blasted to oblivion.
But he needs the right girl.
The production asks: just what exactly is acceptable to exploit for our viewing pleasure?
An explosive play from the critically acclaimed writer of Shopping and F**kng, Some Explicit Polaroids, and pool (no water).
- February 2016
"Unhappy the land that has need of heroes."
Planet: Earth. Time and Place: Italy, 1609.
Galileo looks up at the night sky, using the newly invented telescope. He observes the sun and the planets. He sees with a searingly brilliant eye, his genius and his methods have never been seen before.
But he is in danger; his enemies are everywhere, convincing the Pope that Galileo's new ideas pose a threat to all that the World stands upon.
Soon he will be forced to defend himself and his theories against all of civilisation: in his battle for truth, Galileo has to choose between his life and his soul.
Brecht's greatest play is a shattering and beautiful delving into the cosmos, beauty, science and truth, religion and morality, and the responsibility of Genius. Mark Ravenhill's 2013 translation for the RSC national tour is a hugely intelligent and vibrantly theatrical venture.
- January 2016
God. Torture. Fate. Grief. Maths. Sex.
A kaleidoscope of emotions and situations, with six actors and over fifty characters, 'Love and Information’ gets to grips with the fundamentals of what it is to be alive. A series of scenes that would often be viewed as too odd or conversely too commonplace to be put on stage: a form of drama that’s somehow both familiar and entirely new. A sketch-show meets serious drama.
Caryl Churchill’s 2012 play shows the poetry of life, from the ordinary to the peculiar, in snapshots varying from mere seconds to over five minutes.
- January 2016
"Insanity runs in my family...it practically gallops".
Set in 1940s Brooklyn, Arsenic and Old Lace paints the portrait of the two elderly Brewster sisters who drink tea, gossip, knit…and poison lonely old gentlemen who turn up at their door. As their nephew Mortimer seeks to place the blame for the pile of bodies on his insane brother Teddy, a third homicidal brother Jonathan turns up with his plastic surgeon-cum-alcoholic sidekick Dr Einstein. As the body count grows in equal proportion to the hilarity and shocking wickedness, the Brewster family reveal insanity lurking in every corner.
Kesselring’s most famous work opened on Broadway in 1941 and was described by the New York Times as "so funny that none of us will ever forget it". A highly successful film version with Cary Grant followed swiftly in 1944. With its unique combination of sitting-room set-piece elegance, razor-sharp humour and alarming depravity it is no wonder that this play has retained its relevance, regularly undergoing revivals on Broadway and in the West End.
- January 2016
Farewell Tim is a sketch show with a mysterious hero. You may not have known him, but you will have seen him. He was your neighbour’s neighbour, your cousin’s first love, the kid you bullied at tennis camp. But he was also our best friend.
We want to tell you the story of Tim’s life, the high points and the low points, from the very beginning to the very end. We want to tell you about his hopes and his dreams, his passions and his hatreds, his successes and his many, many failures. We want to tell you about his first moments in this world and the last time we said “farewell”.
Join Charlie and Sam for a night of fast-paced comedy. Tim may not really exist, but the sketches that immortalise him certainly do. This brand new show is not be missed.
- January 2016
Amy's found another body in a hotel bedroom. There's a funny smell coming from one of Jim's storage units. And Kate's losing it after spending all day with the police.
There's not going back after what they've seen.
Laura Wade's 2005 play explores what happens to the people who discover dead bodies. It is a touching, tense drama that demonstrates the unnerving truth that it is death that connects us all. As lives intersect, it is the small details that seem to cause the biggest shockwaves, and you can never be sure who is going to become the next dead body.
